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Good afternoon to you all...I hope all is well in the modelling world!

After a break from this build I now think its time I got back to the task in hand ......and that is to continue with this beast!

It was good to put this B17G down for a bit and have a go at something else but there is so much to do with this project that I am now ready and sort of focused to continue!!

For those of you that have been following this build...(you must all be mad!)...and as a recap..you know that I started with......

Phase 1.....Nose section back to the top turret

Phase 2.....Bomb bay

So now we have nearly half the Fuselage complete.........

...and so its on with phase 3.....the radio room/ball turret station.

As usual its going to take weeks to finish this phase and I will be using the same building method and materials as before...IE scraps of this and that!. Onto the first photo then..........

Here we have the scaled up 1:20 scale plans pinned to the building board and the red circle shows the area I will be constructing (Radio room) and the blue cross depicts the position of the ball turret......

At first ,my idea was just to build the radio room but for displaying purposes it will be better to tag the ball turret to the rear of the radio room bulk head. I will need to construct "an open top" of the radio room so you can see all the detail...as I did with the cockpit in phase 1...not sure how to do this but will work it out when I get to that point!!

So former's were made for the bulk heads and marked out on a sheet of 5mm balsa wood....only 3 bulk heads for this phase!

Here they are all cut out ready....

I am going to build this section as I did in phase 1 and 2....in two halves.

Starting with the lower half here are the former's and stringers in place....

So that is as far as I have got at the moment.

I do hope that this continued build will give interest to some of you as I do know that its predominately kit builds here

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Man this is nice to see. I am often in touch with the current president of our 447th BG, whose father flew some missions on Fuddy Duddy out of Rattlesden. I will have to send him a link to your project so he can enjoy it as it will have extra special meaning to him. Of course any Fortress with those yellow/green markings catches my eye.

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Man this is nice to see. I am often in touch with the current president of our 447th BG, whose father flew some missions on Fuddy Duddy out of Rattlesden. I will have to send him a link to your project so he can enjoy it as it will have extra special meaning to him. Of course any Fortress with those yellow/green markings catches my eye.

Keep up the great work -- I look forward t seeing your progress.

How interesting!...yes please send the link to the president of 477th BG...I'm sure he would be interested and no doubt he will spot many a mistake!!

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Am watching of course. May I say that, given the modular construction and the superb interior, I’m hoping that you are going to display this ‘exploded’ rather than bolted together, if you take my meaning.

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Am watching of course. May I say that, given the modular construction and the superb interior, I’m hoping that you are going to display this ‘exploded’ rather than bolted together, if you take my meaning.

100% Steve!.....

This is one of the reasons I am building it section by section...there will be... in the end about 5 separate sections for the fuselage and a couple for the wings.Each section will be apart from each other making it possible to see all the detail . Not too sure how the display will turn out in the end as it does look rather odd at the moment....you see each section has to be on some sort of support (hence the yellow stands I am making for each section)...time will tell what the whole thing will look like and I'm sure I will change certain things around down the road! ....and its a long modelling road!

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I have spent the last few days getting the fuselage structure built...I started with the lower half and then moved on to the upper half...almost symmetrical or but a few millimeters here and there!.

Here are the two halves........

Placing them on top of each other gives us the definite shape of the fuselage area....

So to try and explain what the plan is for this phase of the B17 build I have tried to put a few arrows here and there.......

The blue arrow at the rear shows you where I am intending to detail the radio room...including the camera bay that is under the floor of the radio room. There will be doors on each bulk head as in the real B17. The Red arrow indicates the Ball turret position and I have done a rather naff diagram of the turret in red using a computer mouse!! The bulk head just after the turret will be as it is...open ....and as it is in the real B17...which is handy as you will be able to view the turret easily.

Ball turret!...aaaggghhh!....not looking forward to trying to replicate that...I have some ideas but I'm sure I will change my mind when it comes to doing it!

I will be starting with the bottom half first which means it's time to get out the yogurt pot supplies!!...some of you know what I mean...will explain in my next post!

The last two days were taken up by constructing with Balsa wood the area for the camera hatch and the ball turret.

I mapped out where each hole had to cut and then made a frame in said area!...for want of a better description!...here is the hole for the ball turret.

...and you can just see the frame work for the camera hatch on this next photo...

After it was all sanded down and checked this is what we have....

Here is a view from the underneath of the radio room and turret location...the red arrow denotes the camera hatch aperture and the blue arrow the turret aperture....

I have started to look round for a sphere shape that is the same size as the ball turret which I can use for a kind of template for the turret...I thought it would be a tall order ...but this morning I went into a Lev shop (pound/dollar shop...depending where you come from!!) and found this kids rubber ball.....and it is just shy of 3mm in circumference.....which I am going to live with!

I checked for fit even though the ball wasn't up for it judging the expression on its face!!!

Ok so that's it.....should have the initial skin on the inside and outside of the fuselage in preparation for some detailing this week end....